Clean-air Bill Carries Painful Side Effects

WASHINGTON — Overcoming sharp regional rivalries, House and Senate negotiators Monday completed work on a mammoth clean-air bill that will reduce smog, curb acid rain and ensure a healthier environment by curtailing cancer-causing fumes from factories.

But the cost to the economy of these environmental benefits is high. The legislation is expected eventually to cost the nation about $25 billion a year. It will show up as lost jobs for Downstate coal miners, higher electric rates for Illinois consumers, more expensive gasoline for suburban commuters, and tough, complicated new regulations for business from the giant steel mills south of Chicago to the neighborhood dry cleaner.

The legislation, the first revision of national clean-air laws in 13 years, was endorsed by the House-Senate conference committee, where it was bottled up for months in intensive closed-door bargaining that threatened its survival.

``It represents the most significant environmental law to be enacted on more than a decade,`` said Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell (D-Maine).

Sen. John Chafee of Rhode Island, the ranking Republican on the Senate Environment Committee, said he expects President Bush to sign the bill once it clears the House and Senate later this week.

It overcame the final hurdles with an agreement on acid rain. The accord provided a last-minute financial break to help coal-burning power plants in the Midwest meet new clean-air standards, and a deal to help displaced coal miners on terms that avoided the threat of a White House veto.

The legislation will cut the current level of sulfur-dioxide emissions in half by the year 2000, with utilities using a system of buying and selling pollution credits designed by the administration to spread the financial costs.

Environmentalists applauded the outcome of the conference, which reconciled differences between House and Senate legislation. ``The breathers` lobby finally triumphed over the polluters` lobby,`` said Daniel Weiss of the Sierra Club.

Business groups said the final version met some of their concerns.

``Americans will see continuing progress in air quality, but in doing that they will pay a price,`` said Susan Roth of the industry-supported Clean Air Working Group.

Ann McCabe, associate director of the State of Illinois office in Washington, said the tough acid-rain provisions affecting Midwest power plants will raise electric rates an average of about 4 percent statewide, though as much as 10 percent to 20 percent for heavily coal-dependent utilities. It is also expected to cost 16,000 coal mining jobs as some utilites switch to cleaner-burning Western coal.

The legislation provides for $250 million over five years to help pay for job training and up to a year of extended unemployment compensation payments for coal miners and other workers who can show they lost their jobs because of the new environmental law.